


Restful Activities

by Alexilulu



Series: Between The Lines [1]
Category: NieR: Automata (Video Game)
Genre: Angst (inside Encrypted Spoilers), Encrypted Spoilers, F/M, Fluff, Fluff Plus Angst Equals Flangst??, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2018-10-12 12:02:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10490478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alexilulu/pseuds/Alexilulu
Summary: It's important to rest and stretch for 15 minutes every 2 hours of playing video games, so how much rest does one need if they spend a week uninterrupted fighting robots that hate? Probably a lot.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Alternative Title: Top if Spoon
> 
> There's 2 paragraphs at the end that are encrypted with ROT13! This is because I had to include something to torture myself with but it's also fairly huge lategame C/D route spoilers so it's encrypted to protect the innocent. Read it at your own peril. The easiest way to do such, unless you love incredibly basic substitution ciphers, is to run it through http://decode.org/ which will reverse ROT13.

9S drops onto the bed in their shared room, bouncing once and rubbing his face. “Man, Anemone was nice to give us this room, but it’s OUR room, isn’t it? We should be able to keep the damn second bed, right? We’re YorHa, we don’t actually answer to her!”  
“She could have just as easily taken the whole room.”  
“Yeah, yeah.” Upon arriving back to the camp no worse for wear besides the aches and pains of a long week without rest, Anemone notified them that she had commandeered one of the beds in their room out into the infirmary; a bad engagement left them with more wounded than their small field hospital could handle normally, so they moved it outside. _Strictly temporarily, probably won’t last more than another day or two _, was how she described it.__  
“One affirmation will-”  
“Mnnnnnn, bad enough 21O does that, do you have to join in?” He rolls over, facing the wall and pulling the pillow over his head.  
“You know she’s teasing you, right?” 2B sits down on the edge of the bed, peeling her boots off of her legs and massaging the deep lines in her artificial skin.  
“…Wait, really? She’s always so serious, I thought it was for real.”  
“It can be both.” 2B stands again, walking a few steps away.  
“Ghhh…girls are too scary sometimes.” 2B chuckles under her breath at that.  
“Are you just going to sleep in that dirty uniform?” 9S rolls over right as 2B finishes unclasping her skirt, dropping it across the chair in the corner. “I thought you cared about hygiene and other human concepts.” He immediately turns away, blushing furiously under his goggles.  
“W-warn a guy, would you? I also care about decency, too!”  
“Pointless. Humans have time for pointless things, but their androids don’t.” 9S is struggling out of his oil and blood-streaked jacket, throwing it and his shoulder bag haphazardly into a random corner of the room.  
“That may be, but…When the war’s over, we’ll probably be integrated into human society, right? We’re built to look like them, so it stands to reason we must be good enough to stand alongside them.” 2B sits back down on the edge of the bed, massaging her feet and stretching her toes.  
“Optimism won’t win you a battle, 9S.”  
“Yeah y-…right.” 2B lifts up the blanket and starts to slide in, while 9S stares in utter shock. “W-what are you doing?”  
“Resting. Beds are more comfortable if you sleep under the covers.”  
“Not that, I thought I was gonna sleep first!”  
“Sleeping in shifts is inefficient in this situation; our maintenance is already complete, but new uniforms won’t be finished by the terminal for several hours.” She’s blocking him in, laying on her side with her head propped up by her arm under the pillow.  
“Buh, I, what about, uhh, haah, ummmm, mhh…”  
“Just get in bed.”  
“Can’t I at least sleep on the outside! It’s weird to be pushed up against the wall!”  
“The wall will protect you in event of an attempt on our lives by machine guerrilla units, and my body is better optimized to take a hit than yours, so my sleeping on the outside might give you the edge you need to survive a surprise attack.”  
“Oh, COME ON!”  
“ **Just get in bed, 9s.** ” A hard edge enters 2B’s voice, only barely concealing the weariness of her speech.  
“Fine!” He scrambles under the covers, turning his back on 2B pointedly and clutching his side of the blanket in both hands and staring a hole in the wall.  
“Thank you.” 2B relaxes, her arm looped under the pillow and the other resting on her side.

____ ********

They lay together in silence. 9S shifts around several times, trying to find the comfortable spot, but every time he starts to move to lay on his back, he freezes, and sighs softly.  
“Can’t sleep?”  
“So you can’t either, huh?”  
“Your sighing woke me up, actually.”  
“Tch…”  
“Just lean against me already, 9S. This blanket is actually thinner than I remember, and I’m getting cold.” 9S’ head whips around over his shoulder, a wild look in his eye.  
“W-what?! You’ve gotta be kidding me!”  
“Do I sound like I’m joking?” 2B hasn’t moved her head or opened her eyes, hair obscuring her face effectively.  
“Well, no, but…isn’t it weird? I’ve never done this…”  
“Really? Never?”  
“Never! Who sleeps in a tiny bed like this with someone?” 2B chuckles.  
“Seriously? Never?”  
“No! Not like I spend any time at the Bunker, anyway, they were always sending me out on recon, I barely even know what my bed feels like.”  
“Incredible.” 2B’s free hand lifts slightly and hooks around 9S’ midsection, pulling him against her with an effortless display of strength. The only sound he makes during it is a muffled gasp.

They lay together in silence. 2B’s arm is looped across 9S’ midsection, his head resting on the pillow just under her chin. 9S’ eyes are wide open, terrified and staring straight ahead, his entire face and even neck bright red.  
“…2B.” 9S voice is barely above a whisper.  
“Mmm?”  
“Have you done this before? With, with other people.”  
“Mm. A few times.”  
“…Is it always this scary?”  
“Only the first time.”  
“Oh, thank God.” 2B responds with a throaty chuckle.  
“Just relax. I’m not going to do anything you don’t want me to, okay? Go to sleep.”  
“Okay.”

They lay together in silence. 2B has draped one leg across 9s’ own, the skin on skin contact driving 9S crazy. 9S shifts in the bed every minute or so, trying to find just the right spot again.  
“Stop moving.”  
“S-sorry.”  
“It’s okay.”  
“I woke you up.”  
“I said that it’s okay.”  
“Yeah, but-”  
“9S. Stop. Talking.”  
“Right.”

They lay together in silence. 2B’s arm under the pillow shifts, and 9S feels her hand trailing through his hair, drawing nonsense in the air and tangling strands of hair around her finger.  
“2B.”  
“Mm?”  
“Why are we doing this?”  
“Because it’s restful activity as defined by the YorHa service manual, Maintenance 34:10-15.”  
“And is that it? You don’t like me, this is just restful activity?”  
“It can be both. I thought I told you that already.”  
“Ghhhh…I guess I’m used to solo work, so I didn’t expect this.”  
“You’ve been missing out.”  
“Have I?”  
“You know why I was surprised that you weren’t used to this, 9S?”  
“Try me.”  
“Because there’s a pool the Operators started after we came back from the factory, trying to figure you out. Apparently 6O talked you up quite a bit, but most of the other operators didn’t know who you were.”  
“And?”  
“They all thought you were a lady-killer, apparently. I think they were projecting their newfound crushes onto you, to be honest, now that I know the truth.”  
“How exactly do you know all this?”  
“Have you ever heard 6O do a check-in call before in your life?”  
“Oh, right.”  
“Also, the Operators have a sort of unspoken ritual of sleeping with their field counterpart the first time they go home to the Bunker, so I was surprised 21O hadn’t gotten here first.”  
“WHAT?!”  
Pod 042 pipes up from the couch where it rests next to Pod 153. “Hypothesis: Unit 2B was attempting to lie to confuse Unit 9S.” 2B snickers, rubbing her chin into 9S’ crown.  
“Well, it was worth a shot.”  
“I can’t believe this. Why are you so mean to me?”  
“Because you believe almost everything I tell you?”  
“So it’s not because you like making me embarrassed?”  
“It can be both.”  
“Ughhhhhhhhhh.”

They lay together in silence. 2B let her hand fall back to the bed some time ago, and 9S’ own is in it now, grasping it softly. His breathing has slowed, and 2B hasn’t heard him say anything or move in the better part of an hour. The quiet lets her mind wander.  
  
Ubj znal gvzrf gurl'ir qbar guvf orsber, ba bar zvffvba be nabgure. Zbzragf bs graqrearff ur jvyy arire or nyybjrq gb erzrzore, orpnhfr gubfr zrzbevrf jbhyq qbbz uvz gb 2O'f unaqf, ntnva naq ntnva. Fur fdhrrmrf gur unaq fur ubyqf fbsgyl, ehoovat ure guhzo npebff gur onpx bs vg, guvaxvat. Fur pna oneryl frcnengr fbzr bs uvf qrnguf, nalzber. Ybtvp ivehf vasrpgvba, fgno jbhaq gung chapgherq uvf znvaobneq naq frirerq gur pvephvg bpphcvrq ol uvf BF puvc, oernxarpx snyy nsgre n erfphr nggrzcg svyyrq jvgu zber oeninqb guna frafr, naq svaqvat bhg gur gehgu. Vs ur qbrfa'g qvr gelvat gb or n ureb, gb znxr 2O fzvyr, ur qvrf orpnhfr ur yrnearq gur njshy frpergf bs gur Znpuvar Jne, naq pbhyqa'g or nyybjrq gb yrg gurz fcernq yvxr n qvfrnfr nzbat gur erfg bs LbeUn, npebff gur Erfvfgnapr. 

Fur gernfherf gurfr fvyrag zbzragf, jurer fur pna sbphf ba tbbq zrzbevrf naq chfu njnl gur njshy gehgu bs ure yvsr nf n jrncba. 9F ornzvat nf ur unpxf n flfgrz ab fjrng ur fnlf, uvf qernz bs ohlvat ure n g-fuveg bs nyy guvatf, 9F fgehttyvat gb rkcynva cebperngvba jura gur bayl orvatf gung fgvyy cresbez gur npg ner navznyf, nyy bs gurfr naq zber. Rnpu bs gurz cresrpg va gurve bja jnl. Funggrerq cvrprf bs n oebxra jubyr gung sbezf Fpnaare Havg Zbqry 9F. Fur fubhyqa'g ybir uvz, nsgre nyy guvf gvzr, ohg fur qbrf. Ure wbo vf gb or ol uvf fvqr, naq fhccbeg uvz, naq gb xvyy uvz vs arrq or. Fur ybirf uvz, naq fur unf gb xvyy uvz. 

It can be both, sometimes.


End file.
